Katrine eBook

But Katrine’s utter honesty was a thing Dermott
had not calculated upon. “Dermott,”
she said, “I have always tried to be frank with
you, haven’t I?”

“And at times,” he broke in, with a smile,
“have succeeded discouragingly well.”

“I want to be so still. Madame de Nemours
has told me the story of Ravenel.”

McDermott waited, serene, inspiredly silent.

“But,” Katrine went on, “I was a
bit prepared for it. Almost the last thing father
said to me before he died was that you were planning
trouble for Mr. Ravenel.”

McDermott waited still, but with a sterner look upon
his keen and ardent face.

“Madame de Nemours has told me you need only
a paper and a certain witness at Tours to carry out
your purpose. Is it true?”

“It is.”

“And that purpose is—­” She
hesitated.

“To see justice done to Madame de Nemours,”
he answered.

“It will mean that Mr. Ravenel has no right
either to his home or his name?”

The pleading and protest in her voice did not escape
Dermott as he answered:

“It will mean just that!”

“And nothing can move you from your purpose?”

“Nothing that I can now think of,” he
answered, adding with some vehemence: “Katrine
Dulany, is it that you know me so little? My cousin
suffered much. She was deserted by a scoundrel
while little more than a child. These things
must be paid for. But if you think I’d do
a crooked thing in business to settle a grudge or
belittle a rival, you don’t know me at all.
There’s none, not Ravenel himself, who will demand
everything proven beyond doubt sooner than I. I’ll
take every point I can honestly, but the man who is
not absolutely honest in business is a fool. Until
he learns to be honest from the higher reason, he
should be honest from selfishness. It pays.
It’s capital.”

“Then you believe the cause just?”

“I believe that the present Ravenel’s
father married in America knowing that he had a living
wife and child in France.”

Katrine stood, hand-clasped, looking straight into
Dermott’s eyes. But what she saw was an
old garden in Carolina, wind-blown pines, the scarlet
creepers around an old bench, and a man with blanched
face and restless eyes; what she heard, underneath
Dermott’s voice, were words from the past:

"I might lie to you, but the thing that separates
us is family pride, family pride. I am going
away to-day, going because I do not dare to stay!"

“Nothing else in life could hurt Mr. Ravenel
as this thing will if proven,” she said, at
length.

“Naturally not,” McDermott answered, succinctly;
“but it is not proven yet,” he added,
in an impartial tone, adding, “I have not been
able to find the witness I need.”

Was it Katrine’s imagination that made her think
the door moved suddenly as by human agency? Had
some of the servants been listening? She paused
in her talk, and, looking into the hall, saw Quantrelle
the Red pass quickly up the stairs with his daily
flower for Madame de Nemours.